Being the Continuing Adventures of a Woman and her Trusty Kayak in New York Harbor, the Hudson River, and Beyond.
(with occasional political rants just to keep things lively!)

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Boy, I Haven't Tormented O-Docker All Summer, Have I?

Well, you know, pride goeth before a fall and all that -- after all of my horticultural nose-thumbing of the last couple of years at poor O-Docker, who resides in an area which is apparently less conducive to basil than my own Brooklyn abode, karma finally boomeranged properly - it just was a sort of dissappointing year for my basil crop. It was my own fault entirely, in the past I had planted seeds early & then gotten impatient & added seedlings, and then I always had the feeling that it was the seedlings that ended up producing most. So this year, I just did seedlings - turned out that the seeds HAD been coming up & contributing after all, and going the seedlings-only route, I dunno, it just looked sparse all summer.

I mean, look, isn't that just pathetic? Hardly enough to bother with.

I did go ahead & pick it today - it's the end of the season now, it's not going to miraculously get to the lushness of last year's crop.

Next year, I'll go back to starting with seeds, and supplementing with seedlings as necessary.

5 comments:

But I did find the key to success this year. Our one potted plant - kept outdoors this time - made it through the entire season, and even flourished. No mid-season obits this year.

It turns out the little devils are very sensitive to watering, or rather, to the lack of watering. Left dry for a few days in our central valley heat, a potted basil is toast.

But a little technology has turned that all around. I hooked up one of those drip watering systems - whose timer has a much better memory than I do - and we've got more basil than you can shake a salad fork at.

Still haven't attempted pesto yet. I'm savoring my victories, one at a time.

Congratulations! I was thinking as I was posting this that sometime during the summer, you'd said as much.

And I'm purely kidding about this not being enough to bother with. It did get off to a very slow start, and we had another one of those extreme drought-or-deluge summers, but one day towards the end of September I looked at them & realized that they'd finally leafed out & it was looking like pesto time. Took me another month to actually pick the stuff but it's starting to cool down here & I noticed when I went sailing on Wednesday that it was looking a little past it's prime. So I just picked all of it & spent the evening making pesto, most of which I will freeze.

Congratulations! I was thinking as I was posting this that sometime during the summer, you'd said as much.

And I'm purely kidding about this not being enough to bother with. It did get off to a very slow start, and we had another one of those extreme drought-or-deluge summers, but one day towards the end of September I looked at them & realized that they'd finally leafed out & it was looking like pesto time. Took me another month to actually pick the stuff but it's starting to cool down here & I noticed when I went sailing on Wednesday that it was looking a little past it's prime. So I just picked all of it & spent the evening making pesto, most of which I will freeze.